Banana Bread with Prunes & Milled Flaxseed

One of my many food related quirks has to do with how particular I am about bananas. I only eat bananas that are all yellow. If they start to get spotty then the banana flavour is too strong for my tastes. So what happens to the bananas that don’t get eaten when they are perfect for me? Well, they sit on the counter getting more and more skeezy until they are ready for banana bread.

Banana bread is a treat. I have tried to make it healthier in the past by using maple syrup, Greek yogurt, rolled oats, etc. in my Breakfast Banana Bread recipe, I’ve come to realize that I want the ‘cakey’ version of banana bread when the craving strikes. I’m not one to feel guilty about food that I eat but if I can sneak in some healthy ingredients that don’t adversely effect the texture or taste of a recipe, I will do that. The prunes in this banana bread recipe give it sweetness but also a deeper flavour that you wouldn’t get if you just added more brown sugar.

The milled flaxseed blends right into the banana bread so you don’t get grittiness that you may have if you swapped whole wheat flour for all purpose flour in recipes before. The amount of sugar in this recipe can be flexible up to a point. I have made this with 1/2 cup of white sugar or as little as 1/4 cup of white sugar. I found that 1/3 cup of white sugar is the happy medium for my tastes when combined with the 1/4 cup of brown sugar.

My preference is for raisins in banana bread, but you could leave this out if you have as strong an aversion to them as I do nuts in baked goods. Whatever makes you happy.

One last note – this recipe uses a food processor to puree the prunes so that they blend seamlessly into the banana bread. It would be a tough go to use a knife to chop them up finely enough but I think you could use a blender. I would add them slowly so that you don’t get a glob of have pureed prunes jammed around the blade of your blender.

Preheat the oven to 350 F, and grease and line a loaf pan with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, mix the flour, milled flaxseed, baking soda and salt together with a whisk. Set it aside.

Add the bananas and prunes to a food processor and blitz until the prunes are quite broken down. Add the butter, white sugar and brown sugar and pulse until they are well combined.

Add in the lemon, milk, and eggs and pulse the machine until they are all incorporated. (You could add all the wet ingredients + sugar to a blender if you don't have a food processor. Perhaps add the prunes slowly so they don't get jammed in the blade of the blender.)

Pour the wet ingredients from the food processor into the bowl of the dry ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon or a spatula until they are just combined and then mix in the raisins.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake at 350 F for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when tested.

Comments

I just made this and the flavour is amazing! I used dates instead of prunes, but kept everything else the same and I love the healthy boost of the milled flax seed. The clean up was easy too since all the wet ingredients were mixed in the food processor and that goes straight in our dishwasher. Once I have more ripe bananas, I plan on making another loaf next week for our freezer as part of my maternity leave food stash. :)